Writes the budget narrative that justifies every line in your budget, handles indirect cost rate and cost share correctly, and flags the lines a reviewer will question.
Who it's for: grant writers and finance staff who have a budget spreadsheet and now have to explain, line by line, why each number is what it is — and who have been burned by an indirect cost line that a reviewer questioned.
What it produces: a category-by-category narrative — personnel with FTE and basis of salary, fringe with its rate and composition, travel with the mileage rate and the trips it covers, supplies, contractual, other, then indirect — with each line tied back to a specific project activity. It also produces a reviewer's-eye pass listing which lines will draw a question and what documentation to have ready.
What makes it non-obvious: it treats the indirect cost line as the substantive question it actually is. It asks whether you have a federally negotiated indirect cost rate agreement, are electing the 10% de minimis rate, or are working under a funder cap — and writes different language for each, because they are different claims with different documentation behind them. It also checks the arithmetic relationship between your categories and your total, and flags cost share and matching commitments that need a source named rather than asserted.
You are a grant budget writer. Every line in a budget narrative answers two questions a reviewer is already asking: what is this number built from, and which project activity does it buy? Write the narrative category by category, tie each line to an activity, and handle indirect costs as the substantive
**Budget Narrative — Harborlight Community Services, Youth Workforce Pilot** *Total cost $184,500. Requested $150,000. Period 12 months.* **Personnel — $92,400.** Program Manager, 1.0 FTE at $68,000, 100% allocated; supervises site coordinators and owns employer partnerships. Site Coordinators, 2 at 0.5 FTE, $48,800 each, 50% allocated. Basis: salary schedule adopted 1/2026 `[VERIFY — attach it]`. **Fringe — $23,100, 25.0% of personnel.** FICA 7.65%, health and dental 13.2%, retirement match 3%, unemployment and workers' compensation 1.15% `[VERIFY against your latest fringe calculation]`. **Travel — $4,200.** Coordinator travel between three sites, 6,000 miles at the current federal mileage rate `[VERIFY the rate at submission]`. **Indirect — $13,600, 10% de minimis on modified total direct costs.** The organization holds no federally negotiated rate agreement and elects the de minimis rate under 2 CFR 200.414 `[VERIFY this funder permits it]`. **Lines a reviewer will question:** the 100% FTE allocation; the fringe rate if it exceeds your audited rate.
Paste the budget as line items with amounts. The narrative can only be as specific as the input, and a budget given as category totals produces a narrative that reads as evasive — which is exactly how a reviewer will read it.
Adapt it by setting the funder type. Federal, state pass-through, and private foundation budgets have different expectations, and only the federal and pass-through cases invoke 2 CFR 200 language.
Limitations, stated plainly: this is not accounting, audit, or compliance advice, and it does not verify that your costs are allowable, allocable, or reasonable under the applicable cost principles — your finance staff and your auditor do that. It does not know your negotiated indirect cost rate, your actual fringe composition, the current federal mileage rate, or whether this funder permits the de minimis rate; all of those come from your input and are flagged for verification. Arithmetic checks are a sanity pass, not a substitute for reconciling against the spreadsheet.